Lawyers long experienced with the Irish conflict made a dramatic St Patrick’s Day appeal to U. S. Attorney General Holder to re-examine Britain’s use of a U.S.-U.K. Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT) in light of the its failure to conduct a public inquiry into the murder of civil and human rights attorney Patrick Finucane. The public hearing was a legal obligation stipulated in the 1998 Irish peace pact (the Good Friday Agreement), a Treaty registered with the United Nations.

Mr. Brendan Moore, National President of the Ancient Order of Hibernians explained: “The Attorney General is the chief law enforcement officer of a nation founded on the principle of the rule of law. It cannot be business as usual with the United Kingdom whose public record of lying and lawlessness has left generations of Catholics living in N.I. without truth or justice.”

“American support for the Irish peace process,” stated Thomas J. Burke Jr. Esq., National President of the Irish American Unity Conference, “has been mocked by Britain’s ignoring the justice provisions of the pact which also included obligations on the Dublin-Monaghan bombings by members of the British Army and a re-examination of the murders of 800 Catholics for police and security forces collusion. What kind of message do we send to other nations when we give a pass to England on its Treaty obligations?

Stated Sean Downes, President of the Brehon Law Society: “Attorney General Holder must act as the conscience of the country and weigh the failures of Britain in the Finucane inquiry with their demands in other areas e.g. processing their subpoenas to conduct a political fishing expedition into the Irish archives of Boston College.”

ANCIENT ORDER OF HIBERNIANS
BREHON LAW SOCIETY
IRISH AMERICAN UNITY CONFERENCE

This letter is to call your attention to a matter of deep concern to us as lawyers, which we believe should be considered as the Justice Department processes subpoenas issued to Boston College for records contained in its Irish archives. The subpoenas have been requested by Britain under the terms of the US-UK Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (“MLAT”). The issue of the validity of the subpoenas is currently in litigation and the subject of a Petition for a Writ of Certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, Sup. Ct. No. No. 12-627.

In particular, in considering its position with respect to the subpoenas, we believe that the Justice Department must take into account that the requesting nation has steadfastly refused to conduct a public inquiry into the murder of civil rights lawyer Patrick Finucane, contrary to the terms of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement between Ireland and the U.K. As you are undoubtedly aware, Mr. Finucane was assassinated in 1989, in front of his family during Sunday dinner, in an attempt to intimidate those who may seek justice from the government of the U.K. Many of us worked with Patrick, and many others were familiar with his exemplary work defending clients in his position as an officer of Her Majesty’s court in Northern Ireland. British Prime Minister David Cameron has admitted that the police, military and intelligence services all conspired to murder Mr. Finucane. Yet, in October 2011, Mr. Cameron inexplicably informed Mr. Finucane’s widow and family that the U.K. government would not conduct a public inquiry into his murder. We believe this refusal was and remains in violation of the Good Friday Agreement and the terms of the Weston Park Agreement.

As you perform your statutory duties and fulfill your obligations under the MLAT, we urge that you weigh carefully the questionable conduct of Great Britain unilaterally deciding to not meet its obligations under the Good Friday Agreement. This raises a serious concern as to whether this was done to insure that those responsible would not be held accountable for Mr. Finucane’s murder.

We appeal to you not only as our country’s chief law enforcement officer but also as a lawyer who shares with us a deep commitment to civil rights, justice, and due process of law. We ask that you ensure that the U.S. judicial process not be used to actively aid a nation which will not hold accountable the murderers of an officer of the court . We hope that you will follow the views of Secretary of State John Kerry on the importance of avoiding the U.K.’s abuse of the MLAT in the Boston College subpoena case.

Respectfully yours,

Thomas J. Burke Jr. Esq. CO
National President
IAUC

Francis Boyle Esq., Professor ILL
School of Law
University of Illinois

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The value of the Oral Tradition is its democracy; it doesn't give to an intellectual elite the exclusive right to shape a communal memory and the collective memory. It makes into a common wealth the story of our shared lives. It's something that we share in common – and it's like a collection plate into which we can all put something: our stories, our myths and the ease with which we are able to, in some way, cross boundaries. - Cleophus Thomas, Jr.

First Circuit Court of Appeals

May, 2013

“… we must forcefully conclude that preserving the judicial power to supervise the enforcement of subpoenas in the context of the present case, guarantees the preservation of a balance of powers… In substance, we rule that the enforcement of subpoenas is an inherent judicial function which, by virtue of the doctrine of separation of powers, cannot be constitutionally divested from the courts of the United States. Nothing in the text of the US-UK MLAT, or its legislative history, has been cited by the government to lead us to conclude that the courts of the United States have been divested of an inherent judicial role that is basic to our function as judges.”

“… the district court acted within its discretion in ordering their production, it abused its discretion in ordering the production of a significant number of interviews that only contain information that is in fact irrelevant to the subject matter of the subpoena.”

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